Last week, we talked about outsourcing our expertise. You may outsource your expertise when you feel like someone else has more knowledge about your experience. This is perfectly fine and necessary even, but you also want to be mindful of when and with whom you're receiving knowledge from. What parts of your inner knowing are you very sure about? In this episode, Taylor shares where her confidence shines and how she's gone about building up her self-expertise.
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Welcome back to another episode of Inner Warmup where your inner work begins. My name is Taylor Elyse Morrison, creator of Inner Workout. And you, as always, are our expert guest. Thank you for being here today. Before we get started, let's do our micro practice. I want you to just take a quick look around your room, or wherever you are, especially looking over your shoulders and what's behind you. Internally, tell your nervous system, “we're safe.” And set an intention to be here and to be present with this time that we're about to share together.
And with that, we can continue our conversation about expertise. The question I got for you today is where am I confident in my self-expertise? Where am I confident in my self expertise? And a great way to define that area is to just think about a place in your life where you're like, I just know this about myself. This is just true about me. I'll start with an example. For me, it is my anxiety.
Last night, I was super anxious. I was curled up under a weighted blanket, I had our Stasis essential oil blend that I dabbed under my nose and on my temples. I have my air pods and I was listening to binaural beats and I was just trying to take deep breaths because there is a lot going on in the world. In general, there's a lot going on in my world. And the anxiety just kind of caught up to me. I've dealt with anxiety for pretty much all of my life and over these 29 years, I've learned how to manage my anxiety. I've learned the regular things that I can do like if I'm moving my body, if I'm working out, that helps me reduce my anxiety. I have a support system of practices and products and partners for when my anxiety is particularly bad like it was last night. I had the weighted blanket on hand, I had Stasis, I knew that binaural beats would be helpful. I knew the ways to breathe in and I also know when my anxiety is so bad that it's not just something I can manage on my own and I need to bring in help.
Whether that is talking it through with a professional therapist or coach, whether that's letting my husband know that I'm feeling especially anxious. And I chose this example of anxiety of being the place where I have self expertise because I didn't build the self expertise alone. I know that can sound kind of confusing at first. But like yes, I am an expert on my anxiety. I know how it feels, I know the different ways that it can manifest. I can feel it creeping up at certain times. I know what can make it feel worse and feel better. But I had help in developing that vocabulary and that expertise within myself. I learned to deal with my anxiety through different types of therapy, biofeedback therapy and talk therapy. Reading books, some related to anxiety and stress management, but also just reading stories of other people. In learning, whether that was going through my yoga teacher training, or right now I'm going through meditation mindfulness training.
Sometimes it's learning like going to a meditation class that someone else is hosting, or listening to a podcast episode. All of that to say, I worked either directly or indirectly by consuming someone else's content, with people who helped me see myself more clearly. They helped me build my self expertise. And just like…self care isn't solo care. Just because it's focused on the self doesn't mean we have to do it alone. Our self-expertise doesn't need to be built in a vacuum. I don't think I would be an expert in my anxiety and how to live with it without other people.
I wouldn't have the skills and the tools and the products and the practices to get me through without the input of others, but just like we talked about at the end of last week's episode, it's this balance of hearing from other people and having other people ask me questions that helped me get to know myself better. And then filtering if someone is giving me offhand advice. Okay, where are they similar to me? Where does their experience differ? And allowing myself to test things without thinking okay, well, this person told me this worked. So I have to put their advice over what feels good for me at this point in my life.
So I want you to think, what is that place for you? Where are you confident in yourself expertise? And why do you have that confidence? Where are you confident in yourself expertise and why do you have that confidence? I'll give you a couple of minutes to reflect before we close it out.
Thanks so much for taking the time to reflect and share. And hopefully to celebrate that you do have self expertise that maybe you didn't realize all the way. And if you're interested in deepening your self expertise and connecting with other people who are stepping into their role of being their own best experts, you're going to want to get on the waitlist for the Inner Working Group Chat. If anything came up for you that you're like, I need to tell that Inner Workout team please DM us on Instagram. We love hearing from you. Thanks so much for listening, and take care!